I have a a few older wyse 3200les and I found a few sites http://tinyurl.com/2f9yybchttp://tinyurl.com/ycnc2td that helped me flash a new firmware boot loader to boot DamnSmallLinux off of a USB drive. I use one for a remote wifi webcam and a basic ftp server.

Oh suck it up people. Yes, this itself is not a hack, but it could very well be the start of one. Many people look to hackaday to find inspiration for their next hack and by posting this great deal they may just be inspiring someone to create something awesome. So don’t be hatin’ just because your too lazy to get your posterior off of your computer seat to make a hack of your own.

I look at this as less of an advertisement for the thin client, and more of an advertisement for Hackaday’s Classifieds. I haven’t seen anything new posted on there in nearly a week. But, while I’m here, I might as well say it: I think HaD would do well to implement some sort of forum; where HaD Answers and Classifieds could exist. Of course, I understand the HaD editors have their own lives, and their own list of things to do.

I picked up a Maxterm thin client a few months ago, and while thickening it was a huge fail, the fact that it runs on 12 volts means that it will be an awesome platform for robotics.
In my case perhaps my ROV.

These are worth $5.00 to $10.00 each. they are very low power and useless for anything but very basic things.

You can Get $15.00 to $25.00 get bigger ones from HP or Other brands on ebay that have 800mhz processors and decent Video cards to work as awesome thin clients that will even play flash video smoothly.

hey all. i have a broken down lawnmower in my shed that i’ll sell to one of you for 6 bucks or a pack of smokes. your choice! reply here if interested. i figure one of you could make it into a robot or something which makes this comment hack related. i’ll be clearing out my attic in about a month. if i find anything worth selling, i’ll submit it to hackaday.

@strider_mt2k
Those MaxTerm units wouldn’t happen to be WinXP embedded, VIA processor, CF based would they? If so I picked up a few of the same. Did you ever happen to figure out passwords for the XP embedded?

The classifieds page can’t find that item, so I assume that they’re now gone (as opposed to my browser settings being hosed or something.) If nothing else, a box with serial and parallel ports on it for that price could be adapted to do lots of different things that modern legacy-free laptops don’t bother with any more.

Neat. I picked up two of the 3150SE models plus an older Praim thin client at work for $30 last week. I think the only difference is mine have 128MB of RAM, everything else seems the same.

FYI the factory default BIOS password on both of mine is Fireport (case sensitive). Once in the BIOS you can reallocate some of the main memory to video memory if necessary, and change the boot order. I’ve managed to get Tiny Core Linux to install to the 32MB Flash chip, but there’s not a lot of room left afterward. Just enough to maybe put a small MP3 server on, however the onboard sound chip is problematic in most distros I’ve tried. I’ve also found that most any regular 2.4 or 2.6 kernel distro will boot and run from USB without issues (again other than audio support – the driver is there but ALSA won’t see the device).

As I have two of them, I plan to put one in my car, booted off USB and patched through my CD changer port to use as an MP3 player. Note that they require a 12 volt power supply so no conversion is necessary. I’m very interested in going mostly headless, perhaps with a small LCD controller mounted to the dash. I doubt the machine is powerful enough for GPS though engine management is a possibility. There are four USB ports after all. The other unit will stay in the house as a spare and for prototyping. I have no idea what to do with the Praim unit; it’s much less powerful but does have a 44-pin PATA header…

Anyone wanting more info can email me at my username at gmail and I’ll go as in-depth as I can.

@cknopp
I don’t think these little guys could run Andriod, you would have to recompile it in a version that doesnt need one of the SSE’s CPU support. I have a similer WYSE that I tried to shoehorn Android into and ran into the same issue. Also on a side note, there may be enough room in there to fit and run a 2.5″ IDE laptop drive, at least there was on my WT9450XE. Fun little machines.

@chickenpluck: No, stock x86 Android dies with a kernel panic. on the 3150SE.

I did recall that my model differs also in processor speed, at 400MHz. I’d love to find info on the custom IDE connector to see if it’s possible to connect a larger drive. This would allow dual or triple booting from internal storage among other benefits.

@D: It should be possible; see my first post above for my ideas on an in-car music server. If you have one of the Wyse clients with USB, you can install a minimal file server using Tiny Core Linux or another ultra-low-resource build, attach and mount a USB storage drive filled with whatever files you wish to serve, tell the file server daemon to serve those files and hook it up to your network. That’s a bit oversimplified of an explanation but it’s the basic idea.

Another approach (the one I’m going to take) is to ignore the minuscule onboard storage altogether and both boot and serve files from a USB device. This gives you nearly unlimited choice regarding distro and file serving method.

You can also use a thin client as a print server at the same time (parallel and USB on so equipped models), as long as your distro of choice contains the correct drivers to share the printer over the network.